I’ve just finished reading Mashable’s 5 reasons Google won’t dominate the next decade, which suggests that search will be replaced by social recommendations for buying power. Then I proceeded to a post by Luke Brynley-Jones at Our Social Times about how the rise of social search doesn’t necessarily kill Google. I tend to have feelings similar to those of Luke. Here’s why…
When I Shop, I Search
If someone recommends a product, I might click their recommendation and make a purchase. But if I’m shopping for lantern fuel, exotic pets, or burlap art, I’m going to search for it. I may make a more informed decision based on the buzz I’ve heard, but ultimately, I’m going on an exploration for the best places and prices via search. Social will change the way I search, but it won’t end my searching.
Google is Smart, Remember?
Yes, mighty giants fall and fall hard. Perhaps I’m naive, but I just can’t buy into the idea that the social web is taking Google by surprise. In fact, as Jacob Share points out, Google is better at searching Twitter than Twitter. And I’d have to agree.
Google Hooks People
Plenty have debated the dangers versus the value of trusting Google’s cloud services with all of your data and information, but one thing they are good at is offering everything you need in their cloud. Logging into your Google mail account puts you a click away from your reader, documents, calendars, news search, blog search, Feedburner account, Adsense and Adwords, accounts, etc. Too many people live and breathe Google’s atmosphere for them to fail in socializing it all.
Google is Great at Captalizing On Success… Anywhere
All of that content that Google makes revenue from was created by other people. Whether it’s search results or content across the web displaying Google ads, they’ve managed to take a little piece of virtually everything and call it their own for monetization purposes. They’re going to do this with the social web as a whole – we may just not know how yet.
I may reflect on this post a year down the road and question my own conclusions. But for now, I’m not counting Google out of the race for the heart of the web… or humanity for that matter.
